Position update - Friday 18 December at 9 am local

Currently about 90 miles off the Venezuelan and about 80 miles to the west of Grenada.

Having passed 2 miles to the east of the gas platform we continued to sail a north west arc and seriously started heading west when about 20 miles from Grenada. Winds today are from just south of east and fairly light, around 12kts, so we're back into light wind sailing again - just like the first 2 weeks of the Atlantic crossing. Having serviced the spinnaker poles in Trinidad, we are now using both to pole out the 2 genoas we have, one either side of the boat. The main is away now as we running almost directly downwind. Although the 2 sails are well balanced, the direction of the swell causes the boat to roll every so often, so we have to be careful when opening lockers and make certain this laptop stays on the chart table! Speed through the water is around 5 to 6kts, but there's a west going current that is giving us another 1.5kts, so 6.5 to 7kts over the ground. As the wind has shifted this morning to south of east, we would prefer to have the outer genoa poled out to windward, so we'll aim to swap them over before lunch, assuming the wind doesn't return to north of east again. The passage distance (via our route) is 455 miles, and at 10.30 today we have 286 miles still to.